“Artists don’t get respect in this country.”

Over the years Hughes has found that demand for spaces in Mother Studios far exceeds the number of available rooms. But she still doesn’t like to make it easy for herself, and chooses to reroute the majority of the money she makes from the building back into the project and her other endeavours.

‘In theory if I was making a million pounds from this, I could just take it all as my profit. But I have a constitution- I have a document out there to show that when I say “not for profit”, I mean not for profit. It legally binds me to that philosophy of looking after the buildings, and I pay myself a fee. But obviously you don’t go into something like this for the money, it’s one of the last things you should do to make money. You can’t just charge artists whatever you want, because artists have a set limit of what they can afford.’

‘Paying off my loans took five years. I didn’t have any income for five years. It took about four years for everything to settle down to being less hectic and less demanding on my time. I just didn’t know how to handle….I wasn’t assertive enough with people who were doing the building work, I chose the wrong people because I wasn’t savvy enough. I think if I was the same person now as I was at the beginning of all this then I would be trapped with all sorts of types that would cause me all sorts of hassle- being flaky with the rent, not being security conscious…..I’m just clearer, I’ve just got the courage to say what I need and stick to it.’

Hughes is certainly assertive, but never in a difficult or self-satisfied manner. Her hard-won pragmatism has led her to become a spokesperson for the artistic community, a passionate evangelist of art’s important role in society. This year saw the second ‘Hackney WickED’, a festival that celebrated the creative activity in the area. Over a two day period, 15,000 visitors descended on Hackney Wick, and Hughes, one of its founders, is understandably pleased with its success.

But as we stand on the top floor of Mother Studios and look out across the neighbouring landscape, separated only by a thin sliver of canal, there is a an area of development that casts a large, hulking shadow over the future of the Wick. A huge undulating mesh of metal here; a massive bowl-shaped edifice there; it’s hard to ignore the vast, burgeoning Olympic facilities literally metres away from us. Ostensibly associated with opportunity, investment and pride, Hughes’ experience of being priced out by development has taught her to be wary of her Olympic neighbour:

‘Artists don’t get respect in this country. We get a funny sort of respect..... But when it actually comes to factoring a huge group of people into society, there’s never any kind of consideration of their needs. Any other country in Europe that has our sort of wealth treats its artists better than we do. In Norway they pay every artist £14,000 a year to be an artist. In lots of other countries they support studio buildings because they know how without that base, there will be no artists. In the worst case scenario here and everybody has to leave- we’ll set up somewhere, but we might be further out of town. And once you get into zones 3 and 4, the vibrant culture of the city drops of massively, doesn’t it, after zone 3? And then you end up not having any artists within the main frame, the workings of the city. That creates an imbalance and things go wrong when there’s an imbalance in society.’